Dark Hearts
by Vader'sMistress
Summary: The Stark sisters are given another chance to start over but is this a gift from the gods, or punishment? Elizabeth is determined to fight her sister's darkness while using her so she can protect herself from her growing madness, while another friend from the past becomes their unwilling tool that could either heal or tear their bond for good.


They say that dying feels like being reborn. That is a whole load of bullshit. The day I died, I was reborn. Not in my world but in another, far distant planet near the center of a solar system far away from its galaxy called Earth.

Not surprisingly, the woman who killed me was reborn as well. You might wonder why I called this wretched person, 'woman', when she was just a girl. But the truth is, she was so much more.

History sees me as the greatest monarch that ever lived, but I was no such thing. In truth, I was a mere maiden of eight and ten, who thought that she could take destiny by the reins and change the world for the better.

Beautiful, golden, fool -the evil queen would've told me.

I knew the minute that I was born who my older sister was. I did not yet know who I was or had any recollection of my previous life, but I couldn't help but feel a bit of guilt when our eyes met. She carried me like I was this fragile doll that needed to be watched over.

I wanted to reach my arms towards her face, to touch her, feel her and confirm my worst suspicions. But I never got close until I was three and I ran towards her. Her arms were open towards me. Her faithful friend and partner, her cousin's ambassador warned her about me.

He was a snake and as such, he injected her his venom when he whispered in her ear, "Looks like you've got someone else to compete."

Mary silenced him with a simple glare. I was her little sister, her darling playmate and she'd protect me against all harm. But when we touched, everything came back. I could see it in that hell-hound's eyes. The rage, the hatred and most of all, her determination to avenge her mother.

 **Arya.**

 _No!_ I cried myself to sleep. Mary did not know what was wrong with me. She was besides herself with worry. What had happened to the little sister who welcomed her presence? Had she gone mad?

Oh no, she did not -I wished to tell her. She is alive! Reborn as your younger sister, dearest sis! Born of the same mother, the woman who'd always preferred me over you.

The gods were merciful as they were cruel. "The gods have no mercy, that is why they are gods." Cersei was right. I smirked, as much as a three year old could imitate the evil queen of Westeros' smirk.  
They were merciful. They had given me a home with two parents who loved and cherished me, but they were also cruel. They had left me orphaned. Bastard from the womb, bastard to everybody including my loving sister. My loyal, purist, self-righteous half-sister Mary.

That was the only thing I found fair out of this whole ordeal. The gods had not given her two loving parents. Her father detested her guts. He was not from our world, he was a new soul but her mother … oh her mother, I knew exactly who she was.

 _Fitting._ Arya was always more like Cersei than Catelyn. She was certainly deserving of the title of Queen Regnant. There was madness in her eyes, a deep conviction that she was meant for something greater. And there would be no one to stand in her way. Not even me.

I wondered if she knew who I was and she as using another one of her slimy tactics to deceive me into trusting her. The next day, I put up a smile and returned to her welcoming arms. I told her I had heard what my former ladies-in-waiting said about my mother and that I did not want it to be true.

"I miss lady mother!" I said in flawless English. Mary did not seem to mind that I ousted her in rhetoric. Words were my shield, apparent honor my sword, and my mother's eyes, the allure that I'd use to hook men into bending the knee to me when I needed their support against my dreaded sister.

"You can't change what happened. Do you know what … treason is?" Like an innocent, I shook my head. My eyes became wide when Mary explained it -to the best of her abilities.

"No! Mother is not dead. She is not. I dreamed of her last night. She brought me a new gown and said that she would dance with me again like last time."

That struck a chord. Mary winced. The last time my parents had paraded me at court had been to celebrate the poor Princess Dowager's death.

"She … did that?" Mary was having trouble speaking but like her old self, she quickly regained her composure.

I nodded.

"I am so sorry, Bessie but you must be strong. She loved you very much and before she died, she asked people to pray for her, our father and you. She wouldn't want you to be sad."

"But what if lord father hates me too? I do not want to … die!"

"He could never hate you. Shhh … It is alright. You have me. I promise you, I will always take care of you."

 _Not this time Arya …_

 **~o~**

As she rocked me back and forth, I thought of the cold smile dancing on her lips, the glee of ambition in her eyes as she cut me open and told me she'd wear my face from now on, and with it, become the new lady of Winterfell. "Loved and admired by all. Hush Sansa, it will be over soon. You are fortunate. You will be reunited with father and mother. Mother will be pleased I am sure, and father …" Her smile turned wider and for a moment, Sansa thought of the ghouls that Nan had told her about when she was a child. Demons who took men's faces and devoured innocent girls. It is nothing but a folk's tale. But this was not a song, she had to endure this nightmare a while longer before the pain was finally over.  
"… He will be glad to have his treacherous daughter back. Stupid, spoiled Sansa … What will you say to Robb? 'I was just a child?' Lyanna Mormont was a child. I was a child … All of us had to endure worse things than you but you …" Her face twisted with disgust, "You wanted to be queen so badly that you would have chopped father's head off just to see your greatest dreams become true."

I struggled to breath. Arya covered my mouth and with the other pulled me up and began to rock me back and forth. She started to sing, "Hush little baby, don't say a word …  
Mother's going to kill for you the whole bloody world  
And if father does not come back  
mother is going to kill the golden lion  
and if at night your eyes won't close  
mother is going to close them for you  
and if the mockingbird doesn't shut up  
mother is going to rip his wings off  
and if they don't laugh at our jokes,  
mother is going to stab their fucking throats.  
And if they start to run away  
Mother is going to paint of king's landing red with blood  
and if the paint wears off  
mother is going to chop more heads off."

The twisted smile returned and she let out a little laugh as I my voice grew hoarse and my skin turned from ivory to blue. She took out her knife and began to carve out her face.

 **~o~o~O~o~o~**

The years ahead hadn't been easy. People like us are not meant to be happy. She had resigned herself to her fate the moment her sister embraced her. Mary was a doer, but she was not a quick thinker.

She acted without regard for what could happen to those who supported her. She was good in inspiring courage amongst her supporter, including the Protestant ones. But it didn't take long for her to find the true -that their support wouldn't last after they find out the ugliness that lay hidden.

Each day, people saw a former beloved princess become more unhinged. Her union with Philip was purely political. She considered falling in love a weakness. But she could not help it when the Prince of Asturias was everything a woman like her could want in a man. It wasn't money that attracted her, it was his physique. He had the body of a warrior and like her, he wasn't afraid of doing away with heretics to protect his family's interests.

But if there is one thing that Arya has never come to grasp is that you can't have everything. I told her in her mother's native tongue of Castile when she questioned me about my involvement with the Wyatt rebellion.

I begged her to spare me. My eyes were puffy with tears, and my cheeks swollen after she had grasped my cheeks, digging her nails deep into my flesh.

She called me bastard and naïve and then as she was about to tell Simon de Renard and the others to drag me back to the Tower, she saw it. Her sister, her porcelain doll.

"Sansa." The words rolled out of her tongue. Just like that. In an instant we were back facing each other like we did back then. Except I was no longer the helpless treacherous whore she mercilessly killed to wear her face. I was Elizabeth of the House of Tudor and Boleyn, daughter of two true born English, and if she killed me now, she'd be doubly cursed.

Arya bit her nails. She turned her back to me. Although I could not see, I could guess what face she wore. It is the mask of fear and regret. The people were abandoning her, she was almost friendless. Her own husband couldn't stare the sight of her.

"I fulfilled my duty …"

"Of course, you did. You kept our legacy alive. But so did I. You remember the words you sand to me?"

I wanted her to face me. I took one step forward and a shiver ran down her spine which made her tremble as I got closer with every word I spoke.

This was not the porcelain doll she tore into little pieces and cast them off into the fire. This was a woman, a younger one at that who like the one in the prophecy told to her mother in her past life, would take everything she ever loved and when she had nothing but her dour-faced ladies, Jane Dormer and Susan Clarenciux, to keep her company, she'd have the final blow to end her misery.

"Hush little baby do not say a word … mother is going to rock you …"

"That is enough! I remember and I remember what you did. Why is it the gods have sent you to haunt me?"

"Not the gods … There is only one God, and he is toying with us both. We are his puppets and this is his favorite game. It's fun is it not?" My lips moved upwards, forming a twisted smile. Like Nemesis and Hera, I had become the epitome of vengeance and ambition and my hunger for it would not stop until I got ahold of my darling sister's crown.

"We should be laughing. We got what we wanted." My laughter is heard from outside, but it is not a mad one like the one they heard from my mother when she was told she would die beheaded. "You should be happy! You got to be Queen and command the greatest nation of the world. What could be better?"

But she did not find it funny and she launched at me. In that moment, her councilors entered and separated the two of us. I was in shock, tears ran down my cheek and I felt like I was about to lose consciousness.

My sister screamed at them to beware of the lying red-headed bastard. "She is a liar like her mother."

"You mean our mother." I said as she managed to break free and got closer to me. Her face became hot. "You celebrated her death. The concubine … the concubine … how does it feel to have conspired against your mother, Arya horse-face?"

That set her off. It was one of the many names I used to bully her whenever she rebelled against our mother and Septa Mordane's orders to tend to her lessons. She jumped at me but this time her husband stopped her.

He heard his wife's shrieking and came to my rescue, like a knight in shining armor like in one of the many songs my mother used to read to me before I fell asleep.

He tamed his wife the way you tame a wild beast. He told them to send me back to the tower. Before I was out, I caught his smile. He lusted after me and to incur my sister's wrath, I responded with a shy smile.

Enjoy your husband and your crown while you can Arya.

 **~o~**

Arya had more tricks up her sleeve. She had gotten herself with child (again). And again she will miscarry. It is disgusting. He owns half the word and she is an old woman whose babies will never see the light of day just like her mother, or they will be sickly and ugly!"

I was beside myself with anger. How could the gods have given me this advantage only to take it away? "It is a sick joke!" I bellowed.

Thanks to Philip, I had been released from the tower and sent to Hatfield. I hated being stuck her for so long. My place was at court with the painted knights, wearing the latest fashions.

But what would I do there to entertain myself except spending long hours staring at my vanity, wishing to tear those lice ridden fur sleeves off my dress.

Mary was described by one of the Spaniards as looking "like a curtain". I chuckled as I told my ladies about it, including Kat Ashley who -despite her chastising- also laughed loudly.

 **~o~**

Kat asked me what I was writing. I showed it to her and commanded her to read it aloud. "My care is like my shadow … I bear beneath the soul … What does this mean?" Nan asked me.

I told her about a fairy tale my mother told me. Her brow furrowed in confusion. I waved it off as an old wife's tale my mother heard from her mother and before her, her mother going all the way back to the Norman conquest.

"Sounds like something interesting. Bloody but interesting. May I read it to the other ladies? We do not get much entertainment since …"

I nodded my head, my voice like a soft melody as I gave her an encouraging smile. "Say no more, Nan. Tell them I will join them soon. I think we can make this into a song."

Nan nodded and hurried out of the room, pleased with getting her lady's mind off her current predicament. She read it aloud for a second time. That day we spent the entire day reenacting this wild 'wife's tale'. I played various roles, that of Cersei, the evil queen, Arya, the mad sister, Bran, the visionary, and finally, Sansa, the tragic princess.

At the end of our little play, my ladies were crying but not I. This was what I had lived through and I was no longer a spoiled little girl who dreamed of being swept off her feet by a handsome lad, or a bird whose wings had been cut down.

I was a falcon surrounded by wolves, stags, and other wild creatures and I wasn't afraid peck them, one at a time, until they grew mad, realizing I was far too high for them to reach me. Nor was I afraid to go through a field of bloody roses to reach my final destination.

 **~o~**

Queen Mary I coughed blood. This wasn't happening. Her baby, her darling son. He was a little wolf who died in her arms. Oh the irony! This had to be her. In a weird way, it made her laugh.

Her ladies worried she had gone mad. Fools! They are stupid women. She had no use of them anymore. She dismissed them and when they refused she barked at them. "Get out!" Even her friend Susan abandoned her.

Jane Dormer stayed. Her defiance and her courage in the face of impending change reminded me of our glory days together. She did not think ill of me when she discovered who I was. She thought that I was the true wolf, the only one who did justice to the legacy of Eddard Stark.

That little minx. Sansa. She would rue the day she tore her face out. She should have gone to her brother Bran or that red witch. They would have stopped her soul from reaching its new vessel and after seeing that wretched babe die in her mother's arms, her father would have gone back to her mother and she would have been his pearl again.

But that is not you. She was a wolf. Wild and free. She had never been happy being the spoiled daughter of Katharine of Aragon and Henry VIII. She urged her parents to get her a sword, to teach her to joust and hawk like a Prince.

"If I am going to rule then I should act less like a spoiled princess. I want to be like you, papa." She was small for her age but that didn't stop her from practicing in secret. She always had a lot of energy, outrunning her mother and her servants, mocking the latter -especially the men- for being so slow.

But once again … that was not Arya. That was not the role she was cast to play, in this life or the next. She closed her eyes and went to sleep. Her subconscious drove her hands to her empty belly. So many dreams, so many hopes and promises.

Her father's beloved daughter. His pride, his reminder that his sister lived through her, and the King's pearl, defeated by a bastard, and a heretic, and a weakling.

 **~o~**

Philip did come to visit his wife one more time. There was a reason why he did not want to comfort her after they lost their first and only child.

He had behaved horribly to her. He laughed in her face when she asked him if he thought she was so ugly and barren that she wouldn't be capable of giving him any children.

He responded by spreading his arms and sarcastically saying. "Where are our children then, Mary? Tell me, where are they? Do you see them running around, hear their cries in the nursery?"

A tear fell from his eye as he watched her sleep. When her eyes opened, he would be long gone. He did not have the heart to tell her, he loved her but that he also hated her with a passion of a thousand suns.

Their little boy could have lived if she hadn't incurred the wrath of God. "There is only one true god and he will judge us all." The red priests often said. He refused to accept his destiny when he found the truth about who he was but it was undeniable. When he arrived to England and saw her, he knew who she was immediately.

His father advised him to be wary of her, to keep her bed warm every night so she could become Spain and the Holy Roman Empire's puppet but Philip refused. In secret, he spoke to his best friend, the Prince of Eboli, of his secret admiration.

Ruy knew who he was, and unlike his mother, he believed him. He tried to encourage Philip by making Mary remember the bond they shared but after her first miscarriage, he realized that they'd never be able to rekindle that fire.

"The Arya I knew and love died a long time ago."  
But for his father's sake, he did his best to make things work. And thngs did work … for a time. Until one day, after he had defended Elizabeth, Mary turned to him. The two were naked and despite their passionate night, there was no emotion in her eyes. She said cuttingly, "I hope you love someone and that person does not feel the same love for you so you know what it is to feel betrayed."

The two seldom spoke after that. He started seeing other women, entertaining them in their chambers before taking them to his bed. Mary did not mind it. He was a king and he could do as he pleased. That made him angry, because it made him feel worthless in her eyes. So he'd respond by giving the same cutting remarks, telling her how fine a lady her sister was, and how complete he felt when he was with her ladies. But that only made her act colder towards him.

But one day, it became too much for them. Philip told her he'd be happier married to a heretic princess than a horse-faced hag. That rankled her. Her hand came flying at him, then she raised her other one but he caught it in midair. They struggled and their fight ended underneath their sheets, two bodies joined as one.

It was one that night that their child was conceived. He had been a beautiful boy. He was sorry he was away on business, tending to his father's territories, not to be present for the birth but he wrote back to her, elated to find out that he took after the both of them.

But then … he died. He should have known nothing Arya bore him would live past a month. She worshiped the god of death. She is death. And the lady of death could not give birth to something pure.

As she began to move, Philip turned around and left. He was not going to dwell on the past anymore. They lived their lives. That chapter of their stories was closed. Arya wished to go on adventures, to live life to the fullest. She had, but her vision remained narrow. She would never be free of the past and a woman like that, could never be trusted with anything.

There was another reason why he felt so wretched. While his heart belonged to Arya, his loins stirred whenever her sister walked into a room. She teased him, toyed with his emotional instability and whenever there was something to celebrate, she'd be the first one to ask him to be her dance partner before he or Mary had a chance to ask each other.

It was dishonorable but Baratheons weren't known for their honor and neither were the Habsburgs. This will be my cross to bear.

 **~o~**

Sansa looked down at her hands. Her sister's body wasn't yet cold before she ordered her new council to grant her access to the priest who'd be giving her eulogy, documents so she could amend them and rephrase it to mention her.

Elizabeth I, the lion, the king's true cub, and the one who would wipe out the shit-stain her sister left on this country.

Her refined words put a new perspective on what type of monarch she'd be. An actress, a fashion icon and someone whose favor would be by complimenting her looks, while new men would have to earn their posts the hard way, the way their predecessors did during her grandfather and father's reigns.

It was a golden age. Like her mother had told her father on the day they celebrated the princess dowager's death, wearing the brightest and most beautiful yellow gown Elizabeth had ever seen, they were on the edge of a golden world and it was all thanks to her.


End file.
